Caption: Yuri Gagarin's landing. Computer artwork of the Soviet cosmonaut and first human in space Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968), with the landing stages of the Vostok 1 spacecraft shown above him. Gagarin orbited the Earth once in the Vostok 1 spacecraft on 12 April 1961, in a flight that lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes. He landed safely 26 kilometres south west of Engels, in the Saratov region of Russia. He later returned to active service as a test pilot, dying in a crash during a training flight in 1968. His ashes were interred with full military honours in the Kremlin Wall.